Mike on Crime

“The last few years have been tough and in those early hours, the shadows of the night always play the strains of confusion and pain so much worse than when the sun comes up to chase the shadows away…We wish with all our hearts that he would have waited for the sun to shine brightly and chase enough of the shadows away to remember that he had a journey to take. But this was not to be.”
— Excerpt from Winnipeg Free Press obituary for Travis Catellier, Thursday July 17, 2008

By Mike McIntyre
Winnipeg Free Press

With a heavy heart and a clouded mind, Travis Catellier’s short life ended last weekend on a grassy Alberta hill overlooking his brother’s final resting place.

Two bullets were fired. One to the chest. Another to the neck.
Just like Jesse.

Only Travis’s death was by his own hand, a shocking end for a young man still reeling over his brother’s senseless 2005 murder.

Now, a family is forced to mourn again, gathering today in Red Deer, Alta., to say a final goodbye to the 24-year-old who touched so many, including dozens of close relatives in Manitoba.

Many will likely be asking the same questions they did following Jesse Catellier’s slaying.

Why?

“Something turned in the night for Travis,” his grieving mother, Ingrid Braak, told the Free Press this week in an extensive telephone interview.

“He’s been a very angry person, a lot of temper issues, real frustrated. But there had been no talk of suicide. This was right out of the blue.”

Maybe something was triggered by the emotional late-night visit to Jesse’s grave, which sits next to the final resting place of their father, Bert, who died of cancer when they were both so young.

Maybe it was the beer in Travis’s belly, a drinking problem that only got worse after Jesse was gunned down. Police found two bottles of beer at the gravesite — one Travis had consumed, another apparently left for Jesse.

It was just moments later that Travis walked over to his uncle’s sprawling farm property, which overlooks the cemetery, and sat down in the grass to text a final message to several loved ones including his common-law wife, Kerry Lynn.

It was the same hill where the Catellier boys had enjoyed so many good times, including snowmobiling, riding dirt bikes and lighting bonfires. Braak said her son always felt a strong “connection” to his family there.

“Tell Mom I love her,” the short text to his wife ended.

Travis then grabbed a small-caliber rifle from his uncle’s property — the same gun he’d often used to hunt gophers with his slain brother — and somehow fired two shots into himself before collapsing.

“I feel it’s kind of symbolic the way he did it,” said Braak.

Three years earlier, it was Jesse who was shot twice in virtually the exact same places while visiting a friend inside a Red Deer apartment. The 25-year-old had been struggling for years with a horrific addiction to crystal meth.

He had tried to get clean following the birth of his daughter, Madeline, in 2003. But the drugs kept pulling him back in.

On the night of his death, Jesse and a friend had gone to confront another drug associate about some stolen goods. The verbal dispute quickly escalated to violence and ended with gunfire. All of the men were high at the time.

Ryan Kristopher Burns, 21, was charged with killing Jesse and wounding his friend. He eventually pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for at least 10 years.

A stoic Braak stood on the courthouse steps following Burns’s sentencing and said she hoped something good could come out of her son’s death.

Instead, there was just more tragedy.

“There’s a huge message in this for me that I want to get out,” said Braak, a nurse who works with inmates at the Red Deer Remand Centre. “There are so many people out there, especially young men, who are lost. The drug and alcohol culture has just gotten insane. And it has to stop.”

She said her family’s experience is a sad example of how far drugs can reach. Big city or small town — it doesn’t matter, she says.

In Jesse’s case, Braak said her son simply “ran out of Mondays” — a reference to the number of times her oldest son vowed to get back on track after yet another lost weekend.

Travis “dabbled” with drugs but had bigger problems with the bottle, she said. However, he was still holding down a good job in the Alberta oilfields and recently started shopping around for a Harley-Davidson.

Now Braak worries about her lone surviving son, Chad, who is taking Travis’s death especially hard.

“He says ‘Now I have no one, Dad’s dead, my two brothers are dead,’” said Braak.

Braak said her boys wanted nothing to do with grief counselling following Jesse’s death, believing they could handle grief on their own.

“Men just always try to suck it up. But it sometimes rots inside them until they explode,” said Braak.

*****

Ian Rabb was so blinded by his own drug addiction that he couldn’t see how it was tearing his once tight-knit family apart.

But the middle-aged Winnipeg resident says he was shocked years later — once he’d finally won the battle and cleaned up — to realize the impact.

“Drug addiction is absolutely a family disease. It reaches out and touches everyone,” Rabb told the Free Press this week.

“There’s always collateral damage.”

He recalls hearing his parents, who’ve been married nearly 55 years, telling him the “only time” they’ve ever fought before was over him.

“My dad was the enabler, while my mom didn’t want (the addiction) to be pushed under the carpet,” said Rabb.

Rabb was saddened to hear the story of Alberta resident Travis Catellier, who was so grief-stricken by his older brother’s drug-related murder that he took his own life.

Rabb said there are likely countless other similar stories of grief throughout the country.

“I’ve been to so many funerals in my life. Overdoses, suicides, HIV. It affects so many,” he said.

Rabb recently celebrated seven years of sobriety following an 11-year battle with crystal meth — the same ugly drug which ultimately let to Jesse Catellier’s slaying in Red Deer, Alta.

Rabb is now an outspoken anti-drug advocate, telling his story in local schools and recently opening up for a new documentary that is being shot in the city. He also works on the treatment end and helped establish a sober living home for addicts.

Rabb says more resources are needed in Manitoba.

“There is no treatment available for families. It’s one thing to get someone off the street and get them clean, but there is a lot of impact on families,” he said. “It’s a very sad disease. We have to start looking at these fundamental issues of addiction.”